How to move a retail license to another VM.

SoFine409 · 24 Jul 2019

If I create a VM and activate it with a retail license and at a later date want to move it to another VM, how would I do that without having an issue with the activation on the new VM?

NavyLCDR · 24 Jul 2019

The same way you do with physical machines. Start by trying to activate it with the product key. If that doesn't work, then try moving it through a Microsoft Account:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/20530

If that doesn't work, you'll have to call Microsoft.

However, with proper VM management, you should never have to reactivate Windows. Unless you change the VM hosting software such as move from Hyper-V to VMWare.

SoFine409 · 25 Jul 2019

NavyLCDR said:

The same way you do with physical machines. Start by trying to activate it with the product key. If that doesn't work, then try moving it through a Microsoft Account:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/20530

If that doesn't work, you'll have to call Microsoft.

However, with proper VM management, you should never have to reactivate Windows. Unless you change the VM hosting software such as move from Hyper-V to VMWare.

Thank you @NavyLCDR. I now realize I wasn’t asking the right question because I wasn’t fully understanding the nature of VMs and the activation process. My concern was preserving the activated license. I now realize that the MS activation servers store the GUID of the VM and not the VHD attached to it. So as long as I preserve the activated VM, I should be able to reinstall the OS on a VHD and it should activate similarly to how it would on a physical machine. The same licensing limits would apply insofar as one instance of the licensed OS per VM. The light bulb went on when I looked at the discussion in this thread Backing up Hyper-V Virtual Machines

Bree · 25 Jul 2019

SoFine409 said:

I wasn’t asking the right question because I wasn’t fully understanding the nature of VMs and the activation process. My concern was preserving the activated license. I now realize that the MS activation servers store the GUID of the VM and not the VHD attached to it...

Correct. Like a physical machine, the disk play no part in the ID of the machine. To preserve a Hyper-V VM that has been activated with a digital license for re-use later, I replace it's vhd with a blank one, then export it. Such an exported machine is just 8MB.

In Hyper-V you need to choose 'use existing ID' when you import a VM, this will preserve the 'hardware ID' that is linked to its digital license.

For VMWare it works in a similar way....

jimbo45 said:

Remember though at first boot of the VM remember to click the "I moved it" and not the "I copied it" box. Activation will be maintained -- if you check the "I copied it" box a new machine uuidd gets created and Windows will think it's a new machine and want activation.

Upgrade to 10 for free - post #6

SoFine409 · 25 Jul 2019

Bree said:

Correct. Like a physical machine, the disk play no part in the ID of the machine. To preserve a Hyper-V VM that has been activated with a digital license for re-use later, I replace it's vhd with a blank one, then export it. Such an exported machine is just 8MB.

In Hyper-V you need to choose 'use existing ID' when you import a VM, this will preserve the 'hardware ID' that is linked to its digital license.

For VMWare it works in a similar way....

Upgrade to 10 for free - post #6

Thanks Bree for the clarification and insights. That’s exactly what I needed to know. I have a license for which I paid full retail and I definitely want to be sure I preserve it when I use it to activate a VM. I see that exporting a VM with a blank disk is definitely the best way to be sure I don’t have future issues. I’m really enjoying experimenting with VMs, so many possibilities especially with the forum’s great resources of knowledge.
Cheers,
Bob